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Dying early means big profits for bad businesses

“Steady improvements in American life expectancy have stalled, and more Americans are dying at younger ages. But for companies straining under the burden of their pension obligations, the distressing trend could have a grim upside: If people don’t end up living as long as they were projected to just a few years ago, their employers ultimately won’t have to pay them as much in pension and other lifelong retirement benefits.” From: Americans Are Dying Younger, Saving Corporations Billions – Slashdot

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times: You should expect the average American’s life expectancy to go down, over the next couple of decades. The overarching model for life in the US is for individuals to provide labor to businesses as long as they can, and to be thrown away when they can’t. Pensions? Retirement plans? All are generally inadequate in terms of both keeping seniors housed and fed, and for providing sufficient medical care, which is why we have Social Security and Medicare.

Big business doesn’t like SSI and Medicare though. It costs a lot of money to run the programs that care for the used-up and ground-down victims of capitalist exploitation, and a lot of that money comes from taxes. If you’re a big business who thinks that taxes should be eliminated, people will ask, “what about SSI and Medicare?” They’re a big obstacle standing in the way of a tax free nation. So, uh, don’t expect them to be around forever. The only thing protecting SSI and Medicare is that old people are allowed to vote. And, since voting has become an impediment to profits, uh, how much longer do you suppose that will be allowed?